Call Your Senator: Sen Gillibrand on Supreme Court, Immigration, and More

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now our monthly, Call Your Senator segment. My questions and yours for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. I'll be asking about the Supreme Court decision allowing people to use bump stocks to make their semi-automatic rifles shoot more bullets, more quickly, more like automatic weapons. The Trump administration, you may remember, had tried to ban them after the Las Vegas concert mass shooting that killed 60 people and wounded more than 400.

The New York Times says the gunman with a bump stock equipped rifle actually had 12 of them, fired about 90 shots in 10 seconds, more than 1,000 rounds in all in that attack, much faster than non-bump stock equipped firearms. Last week, the Supreme Court said if the government wants to outlaw bump stocks, Congress has to pass a law. Well, Senator Gillibrand has such a bill, and we will ask if she thinks they have the votes on what might be, or at least could possibly be a bipartisan gun control measure.

We'll also touch on the Supreme Court's mifepristone ruling. The abortion pill can remain in circulation for now, plus an IVF-related bill the senator has. Also, the several new immigration policies from President Biden. Listeners, if you're a New Yorker, call your senator with any questions you have today. You know what? Even if you're not a New Yorker, you can ask Senator Gillibrand a relevant question at 212-433-WNYC. Call or text 212-433-9692. Senator, thanks as always for doing this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian. I'm happy to be on.

Brian Lehrer: You heard my description of the context for the bump stock case. Want to give us any additional context or corrections and your reaction to the ruling?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Well, this is just another instance of the right-wing Supreme Court and its extremism. The ban that we had put in place or that the administration had put in place was a common-sense measure to basically prevent mass shootings so that a buyer of a gun couldn't automatically use this additional piece of equipment to turn it into something more like a machine gun, something more like a military style AR-15.

The court just basically tied itself in knots to say, "Well, it's still pushing the trigger, even though it's delivering multiple rounds super fast in a way that kills a large number of people." We are responding to their taunt, and we are hopefully going to get a vote on our new bill called the Bump Act, which basically would ban the use of bump stocks to keep communities safer and to limit the number of people who have access to these military-style weapons.

Brian Lehrer: We'll talk more about the bill and whether you can get republican support, but the six-three decision along the usual right versus left lines on the court hung on a very technical reading of what makes a gun an automatic weapon as opposed to semi-automatic, because fully automatics, like what we call machine guns, were already illegal. That was the context. The justices disagreed on whether the bump stock actually converts a semi to, in effect, a fully automatic. Do you want to go there on that technical disagreement or not get into it at that level?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: For your listeners, they basically said, because you actually have to pull a trigger, that you are still pulling a trigger, even though the bump stock converts that pull into multiple rounds very quickly. It is ridiculous and it's putting form over function. This is behaving and operating like a military-style weapon, which, as you know, are designed to kill large numbers of people very quickly. There is no use for a bump stock for a hunter, there's no use for a bump stock because you're a gun enthusiast. The purpose of a bump stock is to change a regular weapon into a very, very powerful, potent military-style weapon.

Brian Lehrer: You have a bill?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Yes, our bill is bipartisan, and we have Senator Collins on it. The bill was originally introduced in 2016 by Jeff Flake, who is a Republican from Arizona. It does have bipartisan support. Whether it has the 60 votes it would need to overcome a filibuster, I'm not sure, but I think it's still important to have a vote on this because it shows what we believe in, and Senator Schumer is supposed to call it up by unanimous consent. We'll see right away who's against it.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I wonder if we have any gun owners, including AR-15 owners or any other gun owner or any NRA member who has an opinion about whether Congress should ban bump stocks now that the Supreme Court put it in their lap. 212-433-WNYC. Anybody listening against this? 212-433-9692. Just curious, gun owners, if you consider yourself a defender of the Second Amendment generally, what about this in particular, in the context of machine guns already being illegal in the United States and these attachments making semi-automatic shoot much more like machine guns?

212-433-WNYC. Any NRA members? Any gun owners of any kind? Anybody oppose the ban of bump stocks in particular, after what happened in Las Vegas? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 for Senator Gillibrand. Was it President Trump who banned the bump stocks and would that indicate Republican support as possible?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: You would think. This came after that horrific tragedy in Las Vegas. Just for again, your listeners, rifles that are equipped with bump stocks can fire an estimated 400 to 800 bullets per minute. If that's not functionally the same as a machine gun, I don't know what is. I mean, that is exactly the rate that automatic weapons would have.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Here is a, let me pull it up, cheeky text from a listener who says, "Please ask Senator Gillibrand if she'd consider naming her bump stock bill after Trump to get more GOPers to support it. Maybe the Donald Trump Gun Safety Bill." I don't know if you want to do that in an election year where he's running against Biden, but you get the idea.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Yes, it's funny. It's actually pretty funny and pretty smart. I doubt it, but the caller is right in that because Trump has supported this, maybe this is something they can do. Also, the Republicans did come together last year, last Congress, in passing our gun trafficking bill that I wrote, we paired that gun trafficking bill, making it a federal crime, with a lot of money for mental health, for violence disruption.

That bill has worked well. I mean, we've arrested over 300 gun traffickers and are prosecuting them. We've confiscated about 3,000 weapons across the country. Law enforcement is using that law very effectively. The mental health money, we've had dozens of not-for-profits apply for it in New York and we've gotten about $100 million into not-for-profits in New York state to do violence disruption as part of that legislation. Republicans have done that one thing in the past so maybe this will be the second thing they're willing to do.

Brian Lehrer: Even the NRA at the time was somewhat supportive of the ban. I looked this up this morning. The New York Times had an article in 2017 that said, "The National Rifle Association endorsed tighter restrictions on devices that allow a rifle to fire bullets as fast as a machine gun. A rare, if small, step for a group that has for years vehemently opposed any new gun controls. Are they fighting?" That was from the New York Times in 2017 about the NRA. My question to you now is, is the NRA fighting the same kind of restriction today that they supported back then?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I don't know where the NRA is on this, but it's interesting that the law enforcement community deeply supports banning bump stocks. Our law enforcement have asked us this makes criminals have capacity that is devastating for community safety and devastating to law enforcement trying to protect communities. Again, this Supreme Court is so far ultra-right. I don't know how they live with themselves. They are incredibly cynical, and they constantly are jumping through hoops to get the result they politically want to have.

The Supreme Court was supposed to be apolitical. It was supposed to give lifetime appointments so that people would not feel the pressure of politics. Well, I've never seen more politics come out of a Supreme Court than this one. Unfortunately, they're just wrong. Hopefully legislative, we can do our work, and hopefully the common sense Republicans around the country will support politicians that want this done as opposed to MAGA Republicans who perhaps don't.

Brian Lehrer: Here is Les, a gun owner in Bay Ridge. Les, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello.

Les: Hello. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. How are you?

Les: I'm a gun owner--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead.

Les: I'm fine. I'm a gun owner and I don't like the bump stocks. I don't like AR-15s. I like small game hunting, shooting paper, skeet. I work with the Boy Scouts, the kids do that too and I like the laws in New York City against the guns because it scares the hell out of me to go to another state where you can pick up a handgun in a matter of hours or a day or two.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Les, thank you very much. Tom, in Morris County, says he's an AR-15 owner. Tom, you're on WNYC. Thanks a lot for calling in.

Tom: You're welcome, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I think that bump stock is nothing more than a backhanded backdoor workaround against owning a machine gun and I fully support the ban on bump stocks. There's no need for it. To my gun-owning brethren, I would say it is not an infringement on our Second Amendment rights to ban this thing because you may still own the weapon, you simply cannot own this accessory, which as I said clearly, a workaround against the ban on a machine gun.

Brian Lehrer: Is that where you would draw the line? Because usually the debate that we have here because that's the debate the country is having, is around the AR-15s as semi-automatics because they are considered by opponents close enough to military-style weapons that there's no civilian use for them. Is that what you draw the line? You would not support banning the AR-15s, which I gather you own one of, but yes, the bump stocks.

Tom: If I understand you correctly, you're asking me if I would support a ban on the AR-15 platform.

Brian Lehrer: Correct.

Tom: No, I would not support a ban on the AR-15. I would, however, make it a little harder to buy. I support the universal background checks. I would divorce HIPAA laws from gun laws so that if you have a history of mental illness or violence, I would make that known to the people issuing the gun licenses, that's where I draw the line.

Brian Lehrer: Those kind of words. Tom, appreciate your call. Thank you very much. Call us again. Senator, from the point of view of people who want more gun regulation, and like I said, the usual debate is over whether to ban the AR-15s, here we are with the AR-15s suddenly coming out as, "Oh, they're not so bad compared to bump stocks," but the Supreme Court has moved this conversation to the right in that respect.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Very much so and I think they're out of touch. You just heard from two gun owners, law-abiding gun owners, one a hunter, one an enthusiast, and perhaps a hunter too, and they understand that having access to a weapon as powerful as a machine gun, a fully automatic weapon is meant for the military. It's meant for someone who trains on these weapons for years in war scenarios.

We are talking about giving anybody the ability to use a weapon of war for any reason. It's obscene, it's absurd and these two gun owners are knowledgeable about guns and they have said for your listeners, that this is harmful to society, and something that they would not recommend. I also appreciated the second caller's interest in more enhanced background checks. I think that's very important.

I support laws to make sure people who do have grave mental illnesses and violent backgrounds and domestic violence convictions, who threatened to kill people in their family, those people should not have access to military-style weapons, and there should be a much more significant background check to make sure that the people who do own guns can do so responsibly.

Brian Lehrer: After the vote this week, you'll either have a law or at least the bill passed by the Senate to send over to the house, or you'll have an election issue for the Democrats nationally, I imagine, especially if senators from swing states who are up for reelection or as it pertains to the presidential election if they're on the other side of that. Let's go onto the Supreme Court's other ruling last week disallowing the lawsuit by anti-abortion activists who wanted to reverse FDA approval of the abortion pill, mifepristone. How protected is that drug now as you see it?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I was grateful that the court was able to dismiss the case, at least on standing. They didn't actually say that women have a right to get the medicine they need. They would not go so far to say that, but they did say is that these doctors who were the plaintiffs are not forced to write prescriptions for mifepristone and aren't forced to take mifepristone so therefore, they don't have standing. The Supreme Court has really undermined women's reproductive freedom and women's civil rights and civil liberties in their Dobbs decision by saying that women of reproductive years don't have a right to privacy.

That lack of a right to privacy means that states can do whatever they want to deny them reproductive freedom. We've seen red states enforce that by denying their right to travel across state lines to get reproductive care, a right to receive mifepristone or other drugs in the mail that they need, or to take or have their conversations on Facebook and social media private so they can talk to their mothers or doctors or whomever about their care. All those cases have been prosecuted in red states under Dobbs. The Supreme Court, unfortunately, is not supportive of women's reproductive freedom. They just, in this case, decided that the plaintiff did not have standing.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call. Whenever you're on, as you know, we get new invite calls from New Yorkers who need help with something that their representative in Congress, you, as one of the senators might be able to help them with. Cordula in Brooklyn is calling for help with something. Cordula, you're on WNYC with Senator Gillibrand. Hello.

Cordula: Yes. Hi. I am a green card holder since 1978. I applied for renewal on December 26th, 2023. I called USCIS today and they told me the new green card will arrive in July 2026, while I know that people in my condition receive the green card in two, three weeks, the renewal. I wonder what's going on there.

Brian Lehrer: Senator, can you help?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Yes, I'd love to offer you the help of my office. If you are willing to send an email, you send it to casework, C-A-S-E-W-O-R-K, @Gillibrand, G-I-L-L-I-B-R-A-N-D.senate.gov. We can look into your case specifically -

Cordula: Thank you.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: - to see if there's any way to make sure you get your renewal of your green card in a timely way.

Cordula: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: You want to give that email address again?

Cordula: Thank you.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Casework@Gillibrand.senate.gov and Brian's producer can help you as well.

Brian Lehrer: Cordula, thank you very much. Getting back to the abortion pill ruling, the Supreme Court didn't say, and I guess this is what you were indicating a minute ago, they didn't say the abortion pill was properly allowed to remain in circulation by the FDA. They just said the group who brought the suit didn't have standing. I guess we're likely to see it come back around from some other group that's trying to find an actual plaintiff who will have standing and try again and again and again to restrict abortion at the level of the Supreme Court any way they can. In the meantime, you have a bill to protect IVF and contraception. IVF at least gets caught up in the abortion debate. Tell us about that bill.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: The bill is the Right to Contraception Act. It would guarantee a legal right to obtain and use contraception. It guarantees that healthcare providers can provide contraceptives and information referral services. It would prohibit the federal government or any state from administering, implementing, or enforcing any law that would prohibit or restrict the sale or use of contraception.

It allows the DOJ, the Department of Justice, providers, and individuals harmed by the restrictions have access under the legislation to go to court and to enforce these rights. The Alabama Supreme Court recently had a ruling about this, and it was something that could have a huge impact. It's another post-ops impact that harms women and doesn't let them have access to care.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts, can the Senator lean on the governor to pass congestion pricing? I guess the question I have to ask before the listener's question is, do you support the governor's pause on congestion pricing?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: This is a decision for the governor, and I think she was pretty clear that there were problems with the implementation of congestion pricing as it was proposed. I have heard from many constituents about their concerns. I've heard from Staten Islanders that it's devastating for them because they don't have access to a subway. I've heard from a lot of first responders that they don't get to choose what time they go to work and they don't get to choose what their hours are.

Sometimes they need to be able to get to work fast and they want to be able to use their vehicles, whether they're coming from Long Island or they're coming from anywhere in the state. I've also heard from a lot of critical workers, healthcare workers, nurses, people who have to be at hospitals at all hours. Other cities who've had congestion pricing have been able to do carve-outs.

For example, London has one of the most known congestion pricing schemes and they carved out, for example, the theater district and said, during the time the theater is running, if you're going to that direction, you don't have to pay because they want to make sure people are coming into London to go to the theater. There are ways, I'm hopeful that there could be carve-outs, maybe for first responders, maybe for critical workers, maybe for people who live on Staten Island.

The other thing that I really hope that we talk about is if our goal is to really improve clean air and clean water, writ large for New York City, particularly from emissions. There are other ways like creating hubs outside of the city where people can leave their cars and then fast rail or light rail into the city. That's something that's going to need a 10-year plan, or a 20-year plan. Something that's much more of a strategic plan for air quality.

Those are ideas that we should look at as well. I think the governor, it's her decision. She's going to work through the challenges that she sees, and I will work on getting resources because obviously, mass transit needs resources. Hopefully, if we flip the house, we will have the majority in the House and the Senate, and together Hakeem and Senator Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, our then-to-be speaker and leader, Schumer can work together to fund the MTA in a more robust way. This particular plan as designed could perhaps be changed or amended or made better.

Brian Lehrer: Someone writes, carve-outs for first responders, Staten Island, nurses, theater growers, you mentioned all of those, person rights, who is left to pay?

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Tourists, people who have a lot of wealth and just want to come into the city when they want to come into the city. Our city has to work for the people who live and work here, and it's very important that we preserve clean air for our kids. Some of the places that have the worst air quality though is not Manhattan. For example, the Bronx has the highest, worst air quality because of the amount of highways that come through the Bronx.

They have the highest asthma rate. When you're going to look more on a meta-level about how do you preserve clean air, it's not just going to be about lower Manhattan. It's not going to be about 60th Street and below. This design was made 20 years ago. This was a 20 years ago plan. The city has changed a lot. The challenges we have are bigger. If you ask businesses right now, particularly in Midtown, are you back up and running post-COVID?

They will say absolutely not because the commercial buildings are 20% unoccupied. That is a huge reduction in revenue for all the corner stores, for all the coffee shops, for all the sandwich shops, the delis, and they're struggling. I just think it's probably for the governor, a much more complex decision than perhaps people see. I support her decision-making process and she will come up with the best solution she thinks for the city and the state.

Brian Lehrer: Last question in our last minute, and it's a big question for a small amount of time, but immigration, the president has at least two new policies. One just announced to allow more undocumented immigrant spouses of US citizens to stay here if they've been here a long time. The other, the big one a few weeks ago to close the border after daily contacts with asylum seekers exceeds 2,500 a day. Do you support the president on both these things? We have one minute.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: I do. The president is trying to implement a policy where he can make sure that when there's a high volume of people coming to our border that he can push pause and say it is not working. They can't protect people, they can't treat them humanely, and so he has to get control of the border, which he is doing. The second thing he's doing is for people who have been here a long time, if they've been here 10 years, paying their taxes, married to an American citizen, they're obviously following all the rules and they're part of our society and part of our community and part of our families. He wants to make sure that they can actually get their green card and start a process of becoming citizens.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, thank you as always. Talk to you next month.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you all. Thank you all.

Brian Lehrer: Our monthly Call Your Senator segment with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

 

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